


Nightmares and Philosophy or good grief does ANYONE not have PTSD around here

by Bardic_Feline



Series: Curetown AU [3]
Category: Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead: Ladyverse AU, Respect A Woman
Genre: Angst, Existentialism, M/M, Nightmares, Strangulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 02:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2370485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bardic_Feline/pseuds/Bardic_Feline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a particularly vivid nightmare, Juan can't get back to sleep.  Well, what better way to deal with trauma induced insomnia than to bug your housemate about it?</p><p>(This is ALMOST an extended version of one of the Curetown ficlets, at least thematically speaking.  It ends better for Juan this time, though.)</p><p>Curetown AU, naturally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmares and Philosophy or good grief does ANYONE not have PTSD around here

    _Juan had lost sight of his fellow survivors.  Somehow, in the confusion of the last horde attack, he must have turned down the wrong street.  He tried  calling out to them…hesitantly at first, for fear of getting the attention of something unfriendly, but then louder and louder, straining his throat in a way that his vocal coach would have smacked him for.  But no matter how he yelled, his voice did not seem to carry very far at all._

_A noise from behind him…a painful sounding, hacking cough….made the small hairs on his neck stand on end.  Slowly, he turned around.  The tall zombie, its tongue twisting and lashing in front of it, a pinkish grey snake’s tail, stared at him with a single, dull eye.  It hissed and screeched at him._

_“Smoker here.  Smoker here!” He yelled, to no avail.  His voice seemed to be absorbed by the air itself.  He reached for a gun that somehow was no longer there (he could have sworn he’d stuck it back in it’s holster…though even that no longer seemed to be there).  Swearing under his breath, he turned to make a run for it, but his legs were lead, and the very air seemed to resist him. It was like moving through cold molasses. (No wonder his voice wasn’t carrying properly.)_

_He tried to move faster, but it was too late.  The thick, pinkish grey snake tail of a tongue was already around his neck.  It was tightening.  He tried to yell for help, tried to get his fingers under the slimy, pulsating organ to pry it loose, but it was already cutting into his skin…he could not longer draw breath.  His vision was darkening.  Lungs screaming for air, he pulled hard against the relentlessly tightening tongue...silently willing it to break…_

            “NO!”

            Juan Rivera fell off the bed with a resounding thud.  Letting out a strangled gasp, he clawed at his throat, frantically trying to remove the bed sheets that had become twisted around it in his sleep. It took him several minutes to get untangled, and he came pretty close to actually strangling himself in the process.

            Shivering violently, he glanced at the clock he kept by his bed.  ‘3 am. Figures.’  Having finally pulled himself free of the cloth, he pulled himself back up on to the bed, and collapsed back on the mattress. There, he focused on breathing deeper and slower, the way he remembered being taught in the handful of yoga classes Nicky had dragged him to back in the day.  Through the nose, in out, as if he was trying to fog up a mirror…like a Hunter, when it had your scent…

            ‘ _Gee, thanks brain, that’s useful_.’ He thought, hugging his knees tight into his chest. 

            It had been months since he’d reached the glorified quarantine zone that had come to be known as Curetown.  Months since that…that…uggh, it was hard to think of the Smoker as anything except a THING as much as he knew it…HE was just a sick person…but still, months since…since Juan had almost been strangled to death.  He’d thought that he’d be having fewer nightmares about it, instead of more…but he was having them almost every night now. 

            “This cannot possibly be healthy.” He muttered to himself, as he rolled over and closed his eyes again. 

            To his eternal frustration, however, sleep eluded him.  Adrenaline still flooded his system, his skin pricked with nerves, his throat felt tight and sore… he wondered if he’d ever feel completely safe again.  He wondered if this is how guys like Sha and Warlock felt all the time…

             ‘ _I wonder if Sha is awake...I should check on him_.’

            Armed with this excuse, he climbed out of bed, and walked out of the room with his pillow clutched to his chest.  Because Of COURSE he wasn’t doing this because being alone in his room was suddenly too scary…he was a grown ass man, grown ass men weren’t afraid of the dark.  It was his responsibility to make sure that Mage-y was okay…

            He couldn’t say he was surprised to find the ex-witch’s room empty…a little irritated, maybe, but not surprised.  Sha was a chronic insomniac, though it wasn’t always easy to catch him at it.

            Fortunately for his own nerves, it didn’t take Juan long to find his housemate.  The skinny redhead was curled up in the same place he’d remembered leaving him earlier that evening, in the blanket fort/nest they’d made in the corner of the living room.  There he was, sprawled out on his stomach, a large, heavy looking book open in front of him.  He was using a long, thin wooden stick—which  in a former life, must have been a skewer of some sort—as  a page turner, and was fully engrossed in the text. 

            Juan couldn’t help but notice the dark circles under Sha’s eyes, and wondered how long his housemate had gone without sleep now.    

            “Have you slept at all tonight?”

            Sha jumped and looked up.  “Mr. Juan! Don’t DO that, are you trying to get killed.” He yelped breathlessly.

            “Sorry.  And don’t bother answering that last question,  I know damn well you don’t sleep if I don’t force you.”

            Sha frowned at him.  “Then why did you ask at all?”

            “Just making conversation.”

            “Mm.  Whatever.   I’d ask why you are awake, but I heard you fall out of bed...so I figure it is safe to assume that you had another nightmare.”  Sha stared up at his caretaker, his yellowish eyes unblinking.  “I considered looking in on you, but I figured that the sight of even an ex-infected might be too much for you if my assumption was correct. “

            “…whatever, man.  Scoot over.”

            “Umm…yes, you may come in?”  Sha’s frown deepened as Juan crawled into the fort  and curled up next to him.  “Thank you kindly for ASKING if it was okay with me.”

            “Well, isn’t it?” Muttered Juan, not looking up from his pillow.

            “Yes, it IS right now, though I do wish you would ask first, if just as a point of common courtesy.  For someone who likes to harp on how socially inept I am, you do take an alarming number of liberties.”  Sha shifted slightly, and glanced down at this housemate. “Would it help you to talk about your dream?”

            Juan shivered, and curled up tighter.  “Mmm…not really.  But thanks for asking.”

            Sha silently accepted that answer and went back to reading; he wasn’t about to push the issue, and besides he hadn’t really wanted to talk with Juan all that much.

            It turned out to be too much to expect his helper to remain silent for long.

            “Say, Mage-y… have you ever considered that you would be more comfortable in an actual BED?”

            Sha rolled his eyes, and answered without looking up from his book. "Absolutely not.  And I am only answering that rather absurd question because you are clearly too brain-tired to think things through with any amount of rationality."

            "It's not that stupid a question..."

            "Given the fact that you are here on the floor with me instead of in your own, allegedly more comfortable, bed...yeah, no, it is still an absurd question."

            "mm. whatever man.  What are you reading?"

            “It is a Geology text that focuses on deep time…how we as a species perceive it, what we’ve learned about it from study the layers of the earth, and predictions we can make about the future from these studies.”

            “Blech.  Sounds dull.  I could never really get into geology stuff much…umm…deep time…that’s that thing that talks about how if the planet’s history was taken as like…a 24 hour day, proportionally, our species would only be around for the last few minutes of it?”

            “At its most basic, yes.  On the broadest possible scale, we are pretty insignificant and brief…and it would not take long at all for all, on an astronomical scale, for all traces of us to vanish if we were to disappear tomorrow.”

            “Dude,  Mage-y…that’s pretty damn morbid.  Specially for this time of night.”

            “You think?  I personally find it to be as comforting as it is fascinating.”

            “…how the fuck is the idea of the human race vanishing entirely and no one caring about it COMFORTING?  Sounds like an existential nightmare to me…I mean…okay, I’m not arrogant enough to think that I’m the most important thing in the galaxy, but I’d like to think that there was something about me worth remembering when I died.  And that someone would care…”

            “Like there is any point in worrying about that.  Presumably none of that is going to affect you at all after you are dead and gone.”

            “Dammit, Mage-y…”

            “Sorry, sorry.  But as to how it is comforting…well, I am not saying that I do not myself dread the idea of death, or that I in any way want our species to vanish.  However…well, after an ecological disaster of the magnitude we have experienced…it really is comforting to know that…well, anything we do is not going to have that much impact in the long run. “

            “Again, how the HELL is that comforting?”

            “How is it NOT?  Think about it, Mr. Juan…no matter what we do to it, no matter how many species we kill off, no matter how many irreplaceable resources we waste, no matter how hopelessly inhospitable we make this planet for ourselves…life will continue.  Something will adapt, something will find a way to cope with the changes, the world will keep spinning, and things will move on.  And if it does not go on here, the universe is so unimaginably big, and so much older than anything we have here, that the odds against life continuing somewhere else are…well, infinite.  No matter how hard we try, we cannot destroy everything, and that gives me hope.”

            Juan frowned, and inched a bit closer to Sha.  (for warmth, of course.)  It was a bizarrely comforting thought when he put it like that, but the musician wasn’t entirely ready to give in.  “I still don’t like thinking that we just don’t MATTER that much, is all.  I mean…what’s the point in doing anything if it can be wiped out in a second, and no one will notice?”

            “You could argue that that makes it all the more important.  Life, I mean.   The mere fact that it is unimaginably brief and fragile…you do not believe that that makes it even more valuable, if only to us?”

            “…huh. I never took you for a philosopher, Mage-y.”

            “Trust me, Mr. Juan, there is plenty you do not know about me.  But…yeah.  I think maybe I used the wrong word earlier when I said we are insignificant.  That word is much too strong.  Universally speaking, we are indescribably small, but…well, smallness and briefness is not a good indicator of importance, is it?  I mean…if you think of us as just a small part of a larger organism…well, we are still a part of it.  Even if nothing is around to notice.”

            “That almost made sense. “  Juan yawned.  “Must be the sleep deprivation taking effect…”

            Sha prodded him with his foot without looking up from his book. “No need to be rude.”

            Juan grunted and curled up tighter. He didn’t want to admit it, but in spite of the topic of conversation, something about simply talking to Sha like this really was making him feel better.  At least the horrors of the nightmare had finally faded.  “So, what got you reading up on this kind of thing in the first place?”

            “Mmm?  Miss Charger did, actually.  She found this book in the remains of the library collection, and recommended it.”

            “Ah.  This DOES seem like a Charger-like topic, now that you say it…”

            “It is somewhat outside of her normal field of study…but I do take your point.  In any case, it really is a fascinating read.  The author makes some interesting observations, and it is one of the more optimistic takes on this particular subject that I have encountered.  A bit rambling, but…hm.”

            “If you say so.”

            “I do. “  Sha paused for a moment.  “Would you like for me to read you some of it?”

            “Hmmmm…yeah, sure.  If nothing else, it might put me to sleep.” 

            Sha laughed a little at that.  “You say that as if this stuff is somehow boring.”

            “It’s  a textbook about rocks and dirt…how is that NOT going to be as dull as…well, you know.”

            “It is about the known and unknown history of our entire universe!  How everything came to be from catastrophic amounts of destruction!  The high improbability of life existing at all because of the massive odds against it, and the sheer…well, MIRACLE that it exists anyway, in spite of how easily it can be wiped out at any second.  We live on a rapidly spinning rock in the middle of a chaotic void, where we can be smashed, blown up, or burned alive at any second, and we take our own existences entirely for granted.  How is that NOT the most fascinating thing?  How is that not completely amazing?”

            “Alright, alright, I get your point.”  Juan smiled.  He wondered if Sha had any clue how cute he was when he let himself be so openly enthusiastic like this.  Probably not.  “Go on and read, I’ll listen.”

            Sha read for some time, softly and slowly.  He actually became so absorbed in what he was reading that he didn’t notice right away when he lost his audience.  It was only when he was pausing to clear his throat that he finally picked up on the fact that Juan’s breath had become slow and regular.

            He observed the sleeping survivor at his side, noting with some wry amusement that the brunette was drooling on his pillow.  “You are a mess, Mr. Juan. You really are.”

            Quietly, the witch marked his place in the book, and closed it.  He did not actually want to stop reading, but his vision was getting too blurry for him to continue much longer.  He looked back down at his helper.  “You confuse me so much.  You really do.  You know how dangerous I can be, but you still somehow trust me enough to sleep next to me like this.  Has it even occurred to you how vulnerable you are?”  He reached out and rubbed Juan’s back gently with a bandaged hand.  “I am not entirely sure I deserve it, but here we are.”

            He swallowed hard, and rubbed at his eyes.  “I really…I do not.”  I swallowed again.  “But…thank you, Juan.  For…just…thank you.”

            Sha closed his eyes, and drifted off to the sound of Juan's even breathing.  
             
            Neither of them dreamed.

**Author's Note:**

> The image at the end was created by [Not-Fun](http://not-fun.tumblr.com) during one of his drawing streams as a commission piece for me, but all I asked for during the stream was of "something cute with Sha and Juan." It was a sheer coincidence that it happened to work so well with this fic. (And that's also why the details aren't perfectly in line with the narrative. It wasn't made to go with it.) In any case, as long as I'm reposting the story somewhere, might as well post the picture with it.


End file.
